Previously titled "Cwen as Model," I am now exploring the different ways in which many types of physical performance and portrayals are shaped by my inner workings and idiosyncracies.
If you're interested in my burlesque performances, go to foxemartin.blogspot.com.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Hahaha. Reviews on Cupcake Cabaret: A Brief History of Bad Women.

I would love to see more.
http://washingtondc.showbizradio.net/2012/07/18/review-49p-cupcake-cabaret/

The show is witty, well paced and seducibly charming. Each lovely dame in the cast delivers her characters with sublime movements and compelling delivery, making the story each one tells alluring and gripping.

We do not go in for burlesque much in Washington, but to our northern neighbors in Charm City, it is a big deal. Burlesque is so much in the fiber of Baltimore that its chief sage and poet, the great H.L. Mencken, invented a term to describe the art: ecdysiast, meaning “an artist who, while dancing, takes off her clothes, for cash money.” So it should not be a surprise that for a show featuring ecdysiasts, the performers should be from Baltimore, here to take D.C. money.
Thus in Cupcake Cabaret, the ecdysiasts – two attractive young women, Lola Rose and Patty Cake (not their real names), and a third attractive person, Cwen L’Queer, who, by the program appears to be keeping the gender options open, ply their trade.

The dance moves are hardly complex, the plot is flimsy and redundant (I wish I had a quarter for every time Belinda shrieks, “dump his ass!”) and the cat-calls and hooting from the mostly-male audience as the girls strip down to their pasties is a bit unsettling. Burlesque, when done with exceptional talent and a solid framework for a plot, can be enthralling, but this insubstantial design just seemed like a seedy excuse for debauchery.

...shows me you can't take a lot of reviews very seriously. One review is glowing, the other are cloudy.
My gender options are indeed open, but what an awkward way of presenting it. I'm certainly no actor, but I am a far more engaging writer than #3. If you "had a quarter" for every "Dump his ass!" you probably couldn't even ride Metro. The audience seemed more mixed than male, since I was looking at them, and if that little bit of hooting unsettled you, well. I question why someone so conservative would go to such a show in the first place.